The blog of a travelling psychiatrist and football lover. Who happens to be a halfway decent photographer. Takes a cynical view of the world

Archive for the tag “aviation”

I am always curious as to the motives for street art . But in this case who is Daphne? Is she real? A TV character? A quick search through google reveals the answer. Daphne Caruana Galizia, a Maltese journalist who was assassinated October 16th. Daphne Anne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese journalist, writer, and anti-corruption activist, who reported on political events in Malta. This street art was a random scrawl on a wall near the seafront.

Wikipedia and others report her journalism as “In particular, she focused on investigative reporting into government corruption, nepotism, patronage, allegations of money laundering links between Malta’s onlinegambling industry and organised crime”.

On 16 October 2017, Caruana Galizia died in a car bomb attack close to her home, attracting widespread local and international reactions.

In Dec 2017 three men were arrested in connection with her murder and 45 journalists have established The Daphne Project to conclude her investigation.

This story will continue to run. In May 2018 two laptop and three hard drives were handed over to German police by her family. The original belief that her laptop was destroyed by the car bomb was wrong as that laptop had not been used for two years. The family had refused to hand these over previously to the Maltese authorities.

A shrine to her of flowers and candles has been regularly destroyed and replaced.

The media are full of the glamour of the FA cup. Sadly for many if not most teams that glamour is somewhat tarnished.

Not everyone is aware that the FA cup starts in August and ends in May. The early qualifying rounds are a god given chance for nonleague teams to make a small amount of money from the moderately attractive prize money on offer. By the time the first round rolls round in November the media suddenly awake with their stories of candlestick makers and funeral directors somehow managing to combine a job and a nonleague football career. Curiously they manage that on each of the other 364 days. As overheard at the recent Met Police FA trophy game a player when asked if he was playing on Tuesday simply answered negatively as was working. As Moriarty famously said in Sherlock “ that’s what people do”.

The glamour of the first round however comes with sadness too. The crowds at many grounds , sometimes famous grounds in FA cup parlor, were poor if not pathetic. The reasons may be varied. Clubs that decide not to offer deals and retain normal charges . Clubs that poorly advertise. Clubs that simply do not care as the league club imagines that the prize money more than compensates.

Let’s take a look at the winners and the rogues gallery. Starting with the rogues;

Colchester. We all recall Layer Road and the Leeds cup tie. The crowd v Oxford City a pitiful 1775. Oxford won 1-0.

Coventry. A crowd of 3370 saw a 2-0 victory over Maidenhead.

Charlton. Another ex-premier league side . A crowd of 4494 saw a 3-1 victory over Truro. Around 1000 were Truro fans

Wimbledon. There has been enough miserable moaning from the club over the last few years about MK Dons and Franchise FC. The famous FA cup winners persuaded only 3394 paying spectators to attend their game against Lincoln City who had an incredible run last year. Terrible in my opinion. Need I continue.

So where were the decent crowds? The nonleague sides playing at home. Hereford who are a reincarnated club but with great cup history had 4712 watch them defeat another nonleague side AFC Telford. Almost matching the highest crowd of the round at Luton v Portsmouth. 5333.

What realistically can be done? There are three options

Do nothing and watch the history and glamour of this great competition die

Allow the FA to subsidise prices for the first two rounds such that the maximum ticket price is £10 or less and children are free

While extra runways are the talk of the town there are few comments on the use of Terminal 5 in an effective manner.

Passengers dread the phrase when it appears on the departure screens, B gates or C gates. It always adds 10-15 minutes onto the time needed to reach the gate. The shuttle train is always coming in two minutes which translated this morning into 6 minutes. At least this is multiples of two. Combined with the wait while the ineffective nonsense of the security search is undertaken provides audible sighs and almost visible misery from the waiting passengers.

Today was such a day. A flight to Frankfurt on a 767. Presumably operational reasons dictated a large plane . No issues there. However the striking metric emanating from the departure screen was that only nine flights were departing from the C gates over a six hour period . How can this be effective for anyone? The shops there lie vacant of business with downcast salesmen with no one to sell to. The concourses were totally empty. Surely there must be a better way to use C gates?

Without doubt this is the first time I have come across fried curry donuts. Served in a cellophane bag , making me wonder how long these have gone uneaten, in a Japan Airlines lounge at Frankfurt airport. I am afraid that I have no intention of eating these.

Corpus Christi is the Catholic holiday in honour of the presence of the body of Christ in the holy water. It is celebrated throughout Spain and is held in either May or June depending on when Easter occurs. To calculate the next Corpus Christi date, look for the first Thursday after Trinity Sunday (the eighth Sunday after Easter) and you’ll know when the fiesta is set to begin in towns and villages throughout Andalucia.

This is a painting from Benalmadena Pueblo by Vincent Van B from Corpus Christi 2016. Today it is still typical to carpet the streets of towns and villages with greenery for the solemn Corpus Christi processions. This adds a special ambiance to the processions. The Corpus Christi parades also tend to attract all the local authorities, and in some cases, military personnel as well.

What can be seen here is not the petals that adorn the smaller streets but the greenery that is essentially decorative only.

As Brentford fans some weeks are best forgotten and it is better to remove those bees coloured spectacles and see the game for what it was. Brentford were comprehensively beaten by a hard working and decent Walsall side.

An excellent turn out from Walsall that filled the away end.

Fans arrived mostly by car but the potential was there to arrive by boat if they wished, and with such a wet game that might have been a good option.

The first half ended 1-0 to Walsall which is how the game ended but it was totally one-sided. The second half was better for Bees once Alan Judge came on, but frankly they never really seemed likely to score with the exception of one excellent save from the walsall keeper.

Why were Brentford so bad? Conspiracy theorists will no doubt argue that the cup is not important or maybe that transfer speculation had upset the side. I don’t know, maybe both are true. But the reality was that Walsall were the better side, their work rate was higher , their players seemed technically better. The five players brought in from last week did nothing to suggest they should be chosen next week. The swirling rain made watching even from Row G a rather wet experience. The plus point was the introduction of Marco Djuricin half way through the second half.

Hands on head time maybe?

The Bees fans on Twitter formed their views of this game which align with mine above. What we learned for sure was that Bees have no strikers. Midfield needs strengthening . But above all the worry that it was not the result but the performance that is most of concern. Players like McCormack did not perform. Swift looked undone by the physical attention of the Walsall players. Hoffman just looked poor really, not a championship player.

Glasgow is a city that many people like and love. Host to various international events and museums. But I have never really “got” Glasgow. Maybe I have not been shown the cool places? I had an hour to spend this walk and just walked around central Glasgow taking a few photographs and again found the city not exactly full of inspiration. As usual it was raining and there was rubbish everywhere. Streets were littered with huge rubbish bags and general detritus. I need someone to point me in the right direction and show me the real highlights of Glasgow please. Strange images of jellybabies playing bagpipes, various graffiti, grey streets and Irn Bru.

Glasgow Graffiti

Irn Bru looked too dangerous to try. As for the Blue Police box, is this serious? The planes had propellers, ok, I exagerrate a little, but not so much. Glasgow airport looked quite dead compared with previous visits. Few planes coming and going. A million shops selling “real fish and chips”.

Glasgow has been named as one of the top 20 ‘Best of the World’ destinations for 2016 by influential publication National Geographic Traveler, the city has also been voted the ‘friendliest city in the world’ in a Rough Guides poll and named a must visit destination by leading publications like the New York Times, The Guardian and Wanderlust! Earning its reputation as one of the world’s greatest cities, you can expect a very warm welcome and when you add world-class architecture, a vibrant nightlife, breathtaking scenery and outstanding shopping, you’ll never want to leave!